Cut out the nonsense, Ms Stanford

RGE's briefing document to Minister Stanford

In December 2023, RGE sent the new Minister of Education a Briefing Document, asking her to cut out the gender ideology nonsense from the Relationships and Sexuality Education Guide. Here are our recommendations for change:

Unlike many groups and individuals who oppose the RSE Guide, Resist Gender Education supports much of it. We are, however, strongly opposed to the gender identity ideology content which is woven throughout.

The Government has declared its intent to remove and replace the guide in the Coalition Agreement, which has drawn responses of delight from some and despair from others.

Resist Gender Education supports this Government’s decision to remove and replace the RSE Guide, and we discuss the key reasons for our support in this briefing document.

The 2020 revised RSE Guide included new content and said it reflected the significant changes in the world since 2015, including the “growing awareness of the concept of gender identity and the claiming of a trans identity by increasing numbers of young people.”

It is this last point, on gender identity ideology, which Resist Gender Education finds contentious and wants removed from sexuality education.

Gender identity ideology is the belief that all people have an internal gender identity which is the determinant of which sex they are, hence a male who has a female gender identity is literally a woman. In this belief system, gender identity is more important than sex, and boys who believe they are girls are free to use the girls’ toilets, play sport in girls’ teams and so on.

Some people believe gender identity is fixed, others that it is fluid. The RSE Guide says children must be believed if they say they are the other sex, because children know who they are.

There is absolutely no evidence for the existence of gender identity. It is a purely subjective feeling.

RGE and others opposed to the guide do not want gender ideology being taught in schools.

We are all opposed to children being taught beliefs as if they are fact, when there is no evidence or science to support them. Beliefs such as:

• gender identity is something that all people have

• behaviour and personality determine a person’s sex

• for some people their sex ‘assigned’ at birth and their gender don’t match which means they are trans

• gender is more important than sex.

We are all opposed to children being taught untruths such as the following:

• sex is a spectrum

• sex is assigned at birth

• humans have three sexes

• lesbians and gays are same gender attracted

• children are free to choose their sex.

We are all opposed to the following practices in schools:

• The mandatory use of pronouns based on gender identity.

• Supporting children to start social transitioning and concealing it from their ,parents.

• Children who identify as trans being able to choose which toilets and changing rooms they use.

• RSE being embedded into all curriculum areas so that parents are unable to exercise their legal right to remove their children from relationships and sexuality education.

RGE does not agree with those who oppose any form of sexuality education in schools, including discussion about sexual orientation. RGE strongly supports relationships and sexuality education in schools.

We note that the Mental Health Guidelines produced by the Ministry of Education to support teachers in mental health education, are equally imbued with gender ideology and all our comments in relation to gender ideology in the RSE Guidelines apply equally to the Mental Health Guidelines.

RGE is a diverse group of concerned New Zealanders. We encompass experienced educators, parents, and grandparents, including some from the rainbow community. We have both retired and currently employed teachers and public servants in our group, but those still employed must remain anonymous or put their jobs and their professional futures at risk.

Resist Gender Education has a website which contains a great deal of information to support families who want to challenge the way their child’s school is teaching about relationships and sexuality.

We also support schools and teachers by providing lesson plans that show how relationships and sexuality can be taught without teaching gender identity ideology.

RGE was established out of growing concern from our members about the gender ideology content woven throughout the RSE Guide.

Our website contains testimonials from parents and teachers about the adverse effects of gender ideology in schools https://www.resistgendereducation.nz/testimonials

Here are two recently added testimonials:

My young son is being forced to change for swimming in a shared change room with a male- identifying female child. My son is aware that the other child is female and is at an age where he feels self-conscious about nudity in front of members of the opposite sex. Many parents of the other children are unaware that the child is female and no-one has been asked whether they consent to their sons sharing the purported single-sex change room with a female child. No consideration is made for the cultural and religious requirements of the other families, or the privacy and consent rights of the boys.

……

I am not concerned about pubertal talks at all.  I am concerned about my daughter being taught that it is inclusive and accepting to lie to kids and pretend they’ve changed sex. I would like teachers to not discipline her if she misgenders a child and respect her right to use pronouns of the correct biological sex.  And even to tell them respectfully the truth that they can’t change sex and they’re allowed to break stereotypes. Teachers might not be able to share their beliefs, but students should be able to.

A further adverse effect of teaching gender ideology in schools is the rift this teaching is causing between schools and parents that the Minister has already publicly acknowledged. A concerning number of parents have already withdrawn their children from school altogether or are seriously considering doing so as a result of beliefs they disagree with being taught to their children.

RGE is uniquely qualified to support the Government in developing the new Guidelines. Our group is made up of experienced teachers, members of the community, public servants, and members of the LGB community. We have an in-depth knowledge of gender ideology and its negative impacts on young people.

Our recommendations for replacing the Guide:

We asked that the Ministry of Education:

• calls an immediate halt to the use of the RSE Guide in schools

• calls an immediate halt to the use of the Mental Health Guidelines in

  schools

• sets up a panel with broad membership from a cross-section of society, to better

  inform the development and content of the new guidelines

• ensures that the educationalists nominated to be in the writing group for the new guidelines are not all supporters of gender ideology as they were in the 2020 revision

• announces a timeline for the new Guide and clarifies the scope of the review

• replaces Curriculum Levels in the RSE Guide with Year Levels so that parents

  can more easily understand what is being taught to which age group

• removes education jargon from the guidelines so that parents can more easily understand what is being taught

• provides a model for meaningful community consultation about RSE to put an end to the practice of tick box consultation.

Removing gender ideology from schools

The RSE Guide is only one part of the influence of gender ideology in schools. Under Ministry of Education guidance, and without open community consultation, many schools have implemented practices and policies that do not take into consideration the rights and safety of all their community.

Some examples are schools:

• colluding with students to hide social transition from their parents

• not being transparent about the biological sex of a student when it is relevant to other parents, for example, when using changing rooms and on overnight camps

• requiring the use of wrong sex pronouns and censuring staff and students who make an error

• unilaterally removing standard English pronouns altogether and discouraging the use of words like ‘girl’ and ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’

• allowing wholly medically unqualified staff to provide advice about binders, puberty blockers, or hormonal treatment

• inviting trans activist lobby groups, without appropriate qualifications, to address students

• punishing students who express a critical viewpoint of gender ideology

• no longer providing single-sex toilets for the comfort, dignity, and safety of all students

• disadvantaging girls by allowing boys to compete in their single-sex competitions, or by removing sex categories in competitions altogether

• inappropriately celebrating gender ideology beliefs when primary and intermediate schools are required by law to be secular.

Our recommendations:

We asked that MOE policy and practices be changed so that:

• effective immediately, schools take no part in introducing or promoting the social transition of their students.

• effective immediately, schools are instructed to inform parents of student requests for social transition, unless there are reliable and compelling reasons not to do so.

• effective immediately, schools are instructed to ensure that the large majority of their toilets are provided for single sex use only.

• effective immediately, schools are instructed to retain single-sex categories in sport for the benefit of girls and, if schools believe it is warranted, to introduce an ‘open’ category in which trans-identified or non-binary students may compete.

• The “trusted organisation” label of trans activist lobby groups like InsideOUT and Gender Minorities is removed and schools are reminded of the MOE policy to check the agenda and qualifications of outside groups before inviting them into schools.

• The Ministry of Education confirms that staff, students, and parents have the right to hold and express views that are critical of gender ideology, without suppression or censure.

• An urgent inquiry is held into social transition and its harms, with best practice policies to be issued to schools.

• The Ministry of Education works with the Teaching Council to develop consistent policies that oppose the use of wrong sex pronouns and the censure of students or staff for ‘misgendering’. 

• The Ministry of Education urgently investigates the legal status of principals being in loco parentis yet potentially not being aware of a child’s biological sex if the birth certificate has been legally altered.

• The Ministry of Education undertakes a survey to determine how many students have adopted a transgender or non-binary identity in schools and the consequences of that for everyone in the school.

• The Ministry of Education undertakes research to ascertain the reasons for the large increase in the numbers of parents applying to home school their children.

RGE December 2023

Since sending the Briefing Document to the Minister, the Department of Education in England has published draft Guidance for its schools which are very similar in content to our recommendations.

We have asked for a meeting with the Minister to discuss the problems that gender ideology is causing in schools and our recommendations for urgent action to return education policies to ones that are supported by the majority of parents.